Why selling Hugo Lloris would be very Tottenham Hotspur

Hugo Lloris has suggested he’s staying at Spurs. These are, of course, just words and as we know they mean very little in the world of football because they don’t necessarily reflect the truth. Hugo cities his contract length and then says he’s concentrating on his holiday post-World Cup exit before returning to pre-season training with Spurs. Then he’ll possibly reveal more about his plans then.

There’s no code to crack here. If I was a betting man I’d wager the French number one goalkeeper will stay at Spurs for at least one more season with Tottenham attempting to claim Champions League football once again. However, if a ridiculous bid was made (say over £30million) he’ll likely be sold for profit. Would we cope with his loss?

In some ways, yes, but not really.

We’ve lost some deeply enriched players in the past five years and retained a balance of strength and competitiveness. Yet losing every one of those players has taken away that extra level of class that might have seen us push ahead of others around us. Instead, we stagnate or rather run out of steam because we didn’t make the extra point here and there count during the season itself. Then again, it’s not always down to losing a world class player that leaves us huffing and puffing.

With Gareth Bale, arguably, we allowed him to spearhead meaning we didn’t have the quality in other areas to cement some of the games we dropped points in. Even under Harry Redknapp you could (harshly) suggest with the likes of Luka Modric, Rafael van der Vaart and the aforementioned Bale we could have done a lot better. So tactically, we’ve lacked the edge to compensate when we’ve needed the steel and fortitude to fight through the rougher patches.

But all of this is inconsequential to the long term. We could replace Lloris with a more than competent keeper but losing someone of his statue means we don’t allow ourselves the time to nurture a winning mentality, one that combines with a siege mentality where both combined can led to genuine tangible progress.

Gareth Bale was always going to leave for a multitude of reasons, mostly those that belonged to the player and his ambitions. Players of his ilk can be likened to an industry within an industry. For the merchandising, sponsorship and the rest of the financial gain, he could only capture the top end of the scale at Real Madrid than suffering on with the dreams of those at Tottenham.

If he wanted to stay, Daniel Levy would have kept him. Keeping our very best players tells everyone watching we want to build. The occasional dismantlement of a single structure seems to be our transfer culture because we fail to appease those that desire Champions League. You wonder what we could achieve if they weren’t all in a hurry to get there via other clubs that are in it already.